


Vendetta

by osprey_archer



Category: The Borgias
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 01:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sancia learns of her brother Alfonso's death. Lucrezia tries to comfort her the only way she knows: by plotting vengeance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vendetta

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lightningwaltz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/gifts).



It was not long after the French armies marched past Rome for the second time that Lucrezia found Sancia crying on the stairs. 

Sobbing, really, twisted up into a knot on the steps with her face buried against her knees, as if she did not want to be seen. Lucrezia paused for a breath: she did not want to intrude if Sancia did not want Lucrezia to find her this way.

But then why would she weep in the public stair? Lucrezia stepped lightly down the last few steps between them, and asked, “Sancia? Are you well?” 

Sancia did not lift her head. But she said, “Lucrezia - ” and then sobs choked her throat again. 

The only thing Lucrezia could think was that Sancia’s husband had been cruel to her. But that seemed impossible: Joffre had no unkindness in him, and anyway, Sancia still stood a head taller than he did. But because she could not think how else to start, Lucrezia asked, “Has my brother been ungallant?”

“No,” said Sancia, shaking her head. She tried to dry her face on her brocade sleeve, but it only smeared the tears, and the gold brocade left a scrape on her chin where she rubbed too hard. 

Lucrezia quickly retrieved her own handkerchief from her sleeve and put it in Sancia’s open hand. “Here,” she said, and Sancia lifted it to her tear-reddened face and honked her nose. She gasped a few deep breaths, and seemed to gain control of herself, and lifted her face to look up at Lucrezia.

“Thank you,” Sancia said. Lucrezia gathered her skirts and settled on the stairs beside her, putting a hand on Sancia’s shoulder. “Your brother - both your brothers,” Sancia said. “Your family has been very kind. It is...it is for my brother that I am c-crying - ” and she pressed Lucrezia’s handkerchief to her mouth, twisting away so Lucrezia wouldn’t see her tears. 

Lucrezia put an arm around her shoulders. “Have you word of him, then?” she asked. Sancia nodded. “Ill word,” Lucrezia guessed, pulling Sancia to press her face into Lucrezia’s shoulder. Her conscience pricked her: the French army had ravaged Naples these last months, and she had not thought to wonder how Sancia felt: Sancia who seemed always so cheerful and teasing. 

Lucrezia admired Sancia suddenly, for keeping up her facade of flirtation and smiles even when she must have been sick with worry. 

Sancia’s tears were hot on Lucrezia’s bare collarbone. If only Lucrezia’s mother were here: perhaps she would know how to comfort Sancia, because Lucrezia did not know where to begin with a grief that encompassed a country and a brother. 

But Lucrezia was a woman grown, a mother herself, and well-taught by her own mother. She stroked Sancia’s dark hair, smoothing out the tangles - the wavy strands twists together, half-knotted in braids, as if Sancia had torn her hair from its careful arrangement when she got news from Naples. The French soldiers had brought it, perhaps. Funny how gossip could seep even from enemy lines. What was Sancia’s brother’s name? Alfonso. He must be dead. 

If Cesare died - 

Lucrezia seemed to turn to ice at the thought. 

If Cesare - 

And he was chasing the French army now, she knew: he did not tell her, but she knew. 

It would be worse than Paolo’s death. 

A lump of panic rose in Lucrezia’s throat, but she mastered it, forcing it back till it softened into sympathy for Sancia. “Your brother Alfonso - he is dead, then?” she asked Sancia. 

Sancia nodded, smearing her tears on Lucrezia shoulders. “Not just dead,” she said; and then suddenly she seemed to steady herself, sitting up, back straight, chin lifted, and her tear-swollen dark eyes steady on Lucrezia’s face as she said, “The king of France killed him - he - tortured my brother to death; and he stuffed his body, as my father used to stuff his own enemies.”

“Oh - ” Lucrezia lifted a hand to her mouth. She felt ill, just thinking on it, and did not know what to say.

But Sancia did not need Lucrezia to say anything. Her eyes were hot and bright and dry. “I will kill him,” she said. “I will kill him, I will kill that king of France, and he will rot in hell for killing my brother and laying waste to Naples.”

“How?” Lucrezia asked. It seemed a noble goal - Lucrezia would have done as much to anyone who hurt Cesare. But one could not go to France and drop a chandelier on the king’s head, after all. 

Not that chandeliers had much to recommend them as a method of assassination. Truly, Lucrezia was no good at killing people - though good enough, it seemed, at inspiring others to kill. _Juan_. Lucky Juan, to be leaving for Spain, where Lucrezia could not reach him. 

Sancia was wiping the last tears off her face with the back of her hand. Her face was still red from crying, her eyes swollen, but fierce. “Do you have anything of the king’s?” she asked. “You were in his camp. Anything?”

“A handkerchief,” said Lucrezia. “But I do not see - ”

“I will curse him,” Sancia said, and her eyes, dry now, seemed to burn. “I will lay _such_ a curse him, as my mother taught me. A handkerchief - that will do nicely. Give it to me.” 

“Witchcraft,” said Lucrezia, troubled. “Your soul - ”

“I will pay any penance your holy father places on me,” Sancia said. “I would, I would go to a nunnery, even - ” She snorted. “I might as well be in a nunnery anyway, now that Juan's leaving.” 

Lucrezia was not listening: her thoughts had pulled her far away. Wanting to kill the king was noble, surely: at least dead, he could not try a third time to invade Rome. But witchcraft - 

Was witchcraft any worse than trying to kill one’s own brother, anyway. And Lucrezia had tried to kill Juan. 

But witchcraft might mean a cruel death, and the king’s cruelty to Sancia’s brother seemed less real than Lucrezia’s memories of that strange night in the French army’s camp: the king mocking his own ugly nose, laughing as she read his fortune in the dregs of the wine - her heart pounding in her chest as he fired his cannons across the field at the Roman army. Toy soldiers, with her brother Juan in front. 

Bile filled her mouth. Pity the cannon had not caught Juan on the first shot.

But no: if it had, then it would have been Lucrezia’s Rome that the French king razed; Lucrezia’s brother Cesare, perhaps, that he killed. 

Instead, he had marched on Sancia’s Naples, and it was Sancia’s brother he tortured to death - her laughing king, why would he do that? Perhaps the devil had gotten in him with the Neapolitan disease. 

And then he had tried to destroy Rome again; and now he razed the Romagna. And now, also, Cesare chased after him. 

And if the King of France caught Cesare? If he knew of the false cannons Cesare had put on Rome’s walls - and he must know by now - what vengeance might the king take? 

The ice was in Lucrezia’s veins again. 

“Yes,” Lucrezia said. She kissed Sancia’s salty cheeks. “I will give the handkerchief to you. Wreak such a vengeance on him: he will never hurt our family again.”


End file.
